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Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Welcome, everybody to this week's episode for the Financial Freedom for Physicians Podcast. And I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Loo. And as we talk about four different types of freedom: time, financial, location, and emotional freedom. And we started the podcast with a group of physician guests in the audience. And now the brand has grown such that I'm sharing the education and information to a wider audience. And hopefully, both sides can benefit.
So today, we have a very special guest, his name is Julian Hayes II, and he's going to be talking all about entrepreneurship. He's going to be talking about business health consultants, and creating your future. So, Julian, welcome.
Julian Hayes II: Thank you so much for having me on. Dr. Loo, I really appreciate that. And I love those four pillars right there, especially the first one that we always think about, of course, is financial freedom. And then maybe location, but then time, and then emotional freedom. And I love the emotional component of that, because it is very, very true. Because you could be in your ideal location, and you got all the time in the world. But then you just feel crappy, and you got a lot of stuff that you haven't taken care of? Because wherever you go, you go. Somebody told me that a long time ago. I tried to run away, changing locations, thinking it would solve all my problems, and it didn't. So that's why that really stuck out to me.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah, right now, people are talking about happiness, freedom, and all of the different components, and all of the pillars. You actually have an interesting slant to it, you're talking about health wise. Health is actually the pillar of everything. If you're sick, you’re always sick, and you really can't have happiness, you can't have freedom. It doesn't matter if you have all the other pillars.
So tell us more about yourself, your background and how you got started.
Julian Hayes II: Yeah, ironically enough, my initial goal was actually to become a physician. I wanted to be an ophthalmologist, so I went to medical school, and I left after the first year of medical school. Not because it wasn’t good, but I knew there was great out there. And I met a lot of interesting people when I was in New York. And I love health, and I love all that encompasses. But I didn't necessarily love being a physician, because I was worried that - the road to ophthalmologist is probably, especially if you're going to specialize, that's a decade at least, I believe. And I was just thinking that I didn’t want to tie myself down to one thing, when there were so many different things that I'm interested in. I could always go back to school. And so that made the decision easier.
And so over the course of time I started as a personal trainer, when I left medical school, I did personal training a little bit in college. And I got to the point where it was boring, because I was like, Well, I think there has to be more, right. And I started noticing different things in my family. And I got interested in genetics and epigenetics, because I noticed certain things propped up a lot down my family tree and other people's family tree, it was nowhere to be found they had other issues. So I linked up with some other individuals to learn about this to get certified, to learn how to do genetic readings. And then I just find things, curiosity takes me places.
And so I started getting involved with different biometric data and then learning how to really look at health in a systems mentality. So even though you look at genetics and epigenetics, it's still a probability. And then you start looking at labs. And so I started adding all these things in, because I'm interested in it. I figured out of the billion people in the world that somebody else is going to be interested in it as well. So that's in a nutshell, kind of how I ended up where I am now. And then of course I write. Not as frequently now, I’m much more busy with the podcasting and everything. But yeah, man, I just love to do a bunch of different things and just always stay active.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah, I think we're naturally born curious. I’m the same way. I love talking to different people and just learning things outside of traditional medicine. And yeah, it's interesting. I remember the first day of medical school, everybody's gung ho. And then there's one or two students that went to the orientation on the first day, and after that, they quit, because they were like, I'm not going to do this. And looking back, man, I wish I had their balls and their courage.
Julian Hayes II: Medical School is interesting because I don't think I was excited when I first got there. I think I got excited once I saw a little clinical stuff. I was like, Wow, is this really it? I'm just going to drink from a firehose. So I told friends, like, it's not crazy difficult. It's just a lot of volume. And it never stops. Where it's like, in undergrad, I feel like you have a week where it's a lot of stuff, and then you can ease off. Except this train never stops. And so I had to really learn time management and everything. But, yeah, kudos to those people. Because I'm sure they save money. So that's the only thing. I'm like, oh, man this is an expensive lesson. But I guess it's better than realizing the third or fourth year.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah, exactly. So what's interesting is you talk about genetics and epigenetics, and some people may not know what that is. Tell us more. What is epigenetics? And we can go from there.
Julian Hayes II: Yeah, so many of us have heard of genetics, right. But a lot of times we haven't heard epigenetics. So just the break, to deconstruct the word, epi means above, the rest of that is genetic. So it's going to be above the gene. And so a lot of times we hear that our genes are our destiny, that's not necessarily true. Because when epigenetics comes apart this is basically a part that can express or not express certain genes. And, I like to think of this as looking at your body as the hardware of a computer. And the software is the different input. And that software ultimately dictates how that hardware operates.
So in our sense, and our bodies, the hardware and the software is the food we eat, the water, that hopefully we're drinking enough of, how we're breathing, how we're handling stress, emotions, as we mentioned earlier, pollution, everything in the environment, the people that we're with, our vocation, our jobs; all of that is dynamically interacting with our body, whether we realize it or not. And at all times, some genes are turning off, some genes turning on. And so in a nutshell, what this looks like in a practical sense is, and this is still very early. And so this is just getting better. But basically, you can be more precise with how you go about establishing a health and fitness plan. A lot of times we say Ketos is the big rage right now, or carnivores are the big rage. Well, some people are not going to be able to handle dietary fats, and specifically saturated fats, as well as other people. So those diets necessarily wouldn't be better for them, they would probably need to look at something else. So that's kind of that in a nutshell.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah. What's interesting is this epigenetics and all of these new ideas are talking about aging. So what's the first principle of healthy aging?
Julian Hayes II: Yeah, the first principle of healthy aging, and it's a super easy one. And it's actually your mindset. In particular, really wrapping your mind around what aging is. So I always say that aging needs a - if you're a marketing firm out there, you should really take a look at this - that aging really needs a rebranding. Because when we think about aging, it's never positive things that come to mind. Typically, for most people, it's going to get old, or your metabolism slows down, you gain a little weight, it's harder to come off, your brain is not as sharp, you feel more brittle, you're more afraid to fall. So it's all these negative connotations.
Whereas, when I think about aging, I think about wisdom, I think about having more experience. So I think about people like LeBron James, who is maybe in his 20th year and he's still a top five, top 10 NBA player, because he has more wisdom. Now he has more experience. And still has his health. And so that's the first principle. And really thinking about what aging means to you? What do your health span and your lifespan, what does that look like to you? If you were a genie in a bottle, how would you construct this? And so that's the first essence of this whole thing. Before grabbing the first supplement, before fixing the first smoothie, it's to really grasp what aging means to you, and how do you want to age?
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: That's interesting. I always thought of aging as a biological thing, but you mentioned it as a mindset thing, which is fascinating.
Julian Hayes II: It's very much a biological thing. Absolutely. But the funny thing is, that's another thing that we can do now, is that you can test your biological age to your chronological age. So it's a company called True Age, I think they have the best one out there, because they go by DNA methylation. And so you can actually compare those two things to say, Oh, I may be like, I'm 36, chronologically, biologically, I'm 30. I'm working on that. I want to go back more. And so you have these things. So for individuals, they can say, Okay, I might be 50-55. But if I put together this plan to do these certain things, these interventions, I can be 45. And so when somebody asks you, how old are you? You just say, 45.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah. I know, sleep is so critical. How does that play into healthy aging?
Julian Hayes II: Yeah, sleep is, I would say the fundamental principle, it's the thing that most probably high performers want to skip, and get as little of, because they're so busy doing everything. I'm one of those people as well, I do not like to sleep, I sleep because it's important. That's the only reason, that's the only thing that can convince me to sleep. I do not like to sleep. If somebody wants to invent something out there, please make one where I don't need to sleep. It's a very small percentage of the world actually, in fact, it has like a gene, I think it's a DEC2 gene. And they can actually thrive, I think, like five hours of sleep, five, six hours of sleep. And you could check their labs and their brain scans and everything. And it's optimal. So I'm jealous of those people.
But for the rest of us if you think about it, sleep is tied to every single facet of life, whether it's with our weight, whether it's with our emotional intelligence, whether it is with our decision making, sleep is tied to those things. And two critical areas that we can all visualize easily are our amygdala and prefrontal cortex. So the prefrontal cortex has logic and reasoning. Amygdala is a more emotional based thing. And these things when you're sleep deprived, there's less activity going on in that prefrontal cortex and more in that amygdala. So in a practical sense, what this looks like on a day to day basis, whether in relationships or at work, or just deciding between food, is that you are going to be making decisions more from an emotionally reactive standpoint, rather than logic and reasoning.
And if you're an investor, or you don't want to make decisions based on emotion. And if you're in a relationship, which I think a lot of problems with relationships can be solved if both parties were not as sleep deprived, but I have no research on that. But, that's a relationship issue as well, that these people are coming to the table, not from more of a logical reason, but more from a reactive primitive state and that amygdala. And with weight loss, sleep is a big portion there. I think there's a study, years ago, I think it was at the University of Chicago. Basically, you have one group that slept around five or six hours, and another group was like seven and a half to eight, they lost around the same amount of weight. But the big difference was, the group that slept around seven to eight hours, they lost actual body fat. Whereas the group that slept less, five to six, they lost weight, but a lot of it was muscle, they lost a little more muscle as well. And so, as we know, lean body mass is a very important metric to look at when it comes to changing your body composition. I know this world talks a lot of times about just losing weight, losing weight, losing weight. Well, there's different forms of losing weight, there's water weight, there's losing weight, with muscle as well. So having that LBM still increase with that group that slept more was an indication there as well. And so helps with hormones as well.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah. The more I think about it, the more I read. It's so important to get eight hours or more to maintain proper, optimal functioning. We talked about mindset, we talked about sleep, and then we'll talk about nutrition. What is one universal nutrition tip that you think would help everybody maintain peak and optimal performance?
Julian Hayes II: Yeah, I think it's, it's setting up and answering four critical questions. How do you eat? What do you eat? Where do you eat? And when do you eat? It sounds so basic, but what you're doing in that situation is you're giving yourself structure. And a lot of times, we operate on randomness. And when we operate on randomness, typically, the decisions are not ideal, or we're going to eat on how we feel at that moment.
And so, how do you eat? What do you mean, how do you eat? Like, literally, how do you eat? And a lot of this goes about what type of nutritional structure you are going to go with. And some people eat in a very stressful state. And that can be that can affect a lot of our gut issues. So simply taking time, maybe five or so minutes beforehand, to just simply do some deep breaths, to collect yourself, and then eat your meal, can help your digestion right there. Because we hear a lot of times now about more and more people seem to be having gut problems. And I guess I'm guilty of this as well. Sometimes I'm multitasking, I'm watching a lecture or something while I'm eating, or I'm trying to take care of emails while I'm eating. But that's taking a lot of the focus off of my digestion at that moment. So that's just one of the examples right there.
And then where do you eat? For most people, most of the time, breakfast is easy. If you're going to eat in the morning, some people fast. It's really the midday, when you're in the swing of just working, and you're in your groove, you don't want to stop. What are you going to do then? And so, that's the critical component with that right there. And a lot of people have opted for some of those meal delivery services for midday. Because they usually have the beginning and the end of the day pretty good. It's the middle of the day, it tends to be a little dicey.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah, that's interesting, how you structure everything. And then the other thing is, you mentioned a lot of parallels between high performance, athletic, and in business and entrepreneurship. So how can exercising, and also just what can high performance athletes teach entrepreneurs and business leaders about sustaining peak performance?
Julian Hayes II: More is not the way. And so what I mean by this is that, when you think about business, and what I noticed with business is that a lot of guys, the more resources you have, the more capital you have, the more you can pour into the business, and typically, the greater ROI you're going to get. So you can just do more and more and more and more. The human body doesn't really work that way, the human body likes balance. Now, sure, you can get to a point to where you're giving, well, you're doing a lot of volume, you're running a lot of miles weekly, but you're not going to start that way. And if you do, then you're going to have to recover as much as you train. And this is the thing that, especially a lot of businessmen, typically miss the ball on because they're very type A, very competitive driven.
So let's use CrossFit, for example. They want to go from zero to 100 in CrossFit. And I don't know how their mobility is. Their sleep may not be optimal at the moment, their nutrition may not be optimal, but they're just going from zero to 100 fully fledged in. And you could probably get away with that for a few weeks, of course, right. But if you think about the longevity of things, there's a high risk of injury to high risk of burnout. And there's just another higher risk of just interfering with your schedule and all of that. And then it becomes a battle between fitness and your everyday life. And this is a lot of times why people have this seesaw with their health and fitness is because there's no congruence, there's no synergy, and they're not seamlessly integrated with each other. But, the recovery aspect is what I really harp on. Because we see these amazing athletes doing these amazing feats, but we don't see the behind the scenes work. We don't see the ice baths. We don't see the massage sessions. We do not see the sauna sessions. A lot of times, we do not see a lot of this stuff. So all we see is the doing, but we don't see what leads up to that. And this is the same thing as individuals when they apply for their health.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah, that's interesting. I know I've heard about ice baths. What are the sauna sessions? And how does it help?
Julian Hayes II: Yeah, so if you're interested in it, look up Dr. Rhonda Patrick. She does talk a lot about saunas. But I like to look at it as you can use it before and after your workouts. I tend to prefer after. And it's helping with blood flow, it's helping with something we call heat shock proteins. I know it helps with clotting, as well as for individuals to have that issue or not. I know sometimes you get certain illnesses and you can have a potential risk factor down the road for clotting. So the sauna helps with that. And I believe a couple times a week, around 20 minutes, it reduces all causes of mortality. Because a lot of the Scandinavian countries do a lot of research. And is it because they're like, I think everyone has it there, it's like, as common as drinking water for us is that their sauna use? So I believe the sweet spot is 20 minutes per session. Most people probably will not start with 20 minutes. But it's something to work up to. But a couple times a week, it does reduce all causes of mortality. And I forgot what percentage.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah, that's so fascinating how you can use extreme temperatures, extreme cold and extreme heat. I've actually done the two minute Wim Hof daily cold showers. And that really improves your energy, your focus and your clarity.
Julian Hayes II: I hate the cold. I do them both. But for some people, it goes back to our individual makeup. Some people can handle the heat a lot more than the cold, and vice versa. Cold showers for some reason, even for two minutes, are just so brutal to me. Whereas I can sit in the sauna literally for 20 minutes and just relax.
Oh, another good thing is that the sauna is just going to sweat out a lot of the heavy metals and pollutants that get in our body. And so that's another big one. Because you can be as diligent as you want. But you're still going to get heavy metals and everything in the world. At least speaking for America. It's pretty much impossible to avoid. So the sauna helps with that a little bit as well.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Excellent. Excellent. Well, well, Julian, it's been a really fascinating discussion that you're very knowledgeable and you. I like how you incorporate help and science in athletics into business and becoming a top performer. So I know a lot of people are interested in finding out more about you and learning about you. So how can they do that?
Julian Hayes II: You can just simply find me at theartoffitnessandlife.com. And it'll have all the social media links and the podcast link and much more there.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Yeah. And to the audience, Julian's resources will be in the links and show notes. Julian, fascinating discussion, and hopefully we look forward to working with you in the future.
Julian Hayes II: Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it.
Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD: Many thanks again for being here. If you’re new, you can find me online at Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD, where I have links to other episodes or links to online resources that will support you on your financial literacy journey. I’ll see you there in on next week’s show. While I bring you thoroughly vetted information on this show regarding a variety of financial topics, I cannot promise you a one size fits all solution. This is why I caution you to continue to learn. Educate yourself and seek professional advice unique to your situation. If you want to talk to me, I welcome it. Please reach out via my website or email at Chris@drchrisloomdphd.com. I read and personally respond to all of my emails. Talk soon!
Editor's note: This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.